Anti-Christian Attacks in Germany on the Rise

Hate crime figures leaked by police in Germany have caused alarm, as they revealed murder, assault, and arson numbering among almost 100 attacks which targeted Christians in 2017.
Published by the Funke media group several months before annual crime statistics are due to be officially released, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) data showed attacks on churches and Christian symbols accounted for a quarter of the 97 cases.

At least 14 of the cases in the report involved asylum seekers and refugees, including the murder of an Afghan Christian convert by a fellow Afghan in May last year which prompted politicians to urge the BKA to record “anti-Christian crimes” separately for the first time.

Ansgar Heveling, interior policy spokesman for Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, called the figures “alarming” and argued that the state “has a responsibility to punish these attacks severely and consistently… [as] anti-Semitic attacks are rightly being tackled”.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, of the right-wing Christian Social Union (CSU), told Funke group newspapers: “Integration in Germany has to require tolerating its Christian, Western values and culture without any ifs or buts.”

Berthold Löffler, a political science professor at the University of Ravensburg-Weingarten, said the minister’s use of the word “tolerance” shows how little is actually being asked of the newcomers living at German taxpayers’ expense.

“Requiring immigrants take on our values is too much to ask, but they really ought to tolerate us locals, even if they feel our values are a bit suspect,” he characterised the message of Hermann’s statement in a piece published at Tichy’s Insight, where he noted the CSU minister’s “demand” was mild and discussed the country’s “naive welcome culture”.

Stating the BKA figures are likely “only the tip of the iceberg” with regards to the number of anti-Christian attacks taking place in Germany, Löffler writes: “One can confidently assume that the mainstream media would much rather report on Islamophobic incidents and xenophobic crimes committed by ethnic Germans.”

Breitbart London reported last year how anti-Christian attacks had risen 245 per cent in France since 2008, while the number of anti-Muslim attacks saw a huge fall in the same period.

Data released by the French interior ministry showed anti-Christian acts accounting for 90 per cent of attacks on religious buildings and institutions — a figure which includes arson, violence, degradation, threats, and ‘insulting’ vandalism and graffiti.

Last week, it was alleged that French intelligence agencies had prior knowledge of one of the Islamic extremists involved in the beheading of Father Jacques Hamel in a Normandy church in 2016, but failed to act.